Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, has expressed the belief that the automation of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) will up the ante in tackling corruption to a large extent in the country.
Inuwa who made this known during a courtesy visit to him by members of staff of the ICPC, led by the Chairman, Dr. Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, confirmed the Agency’s readiness to collaborate with ICPC to aid the digitisation of its services and monitoring corrupt practices in public institutions, noting that automation is a journey and not a one-off process.
“We have over 293 processes to automate but we are selecting them one after the other to achieve the goal of the Agency. We do this for other Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) also. We have other initiatives in place to help them achieve digital transformation,” Inuwa noted.
Speaking further, the Director-General said, “NITDA organises a lot of training and has a technical Working Group which started about three years ago, and saddled with the task of training representatives from different MDAs who are later asked to nominate people that will become champions to promote digital transformation in their respective organisations.”
“Two years ago, the Shippers Council came to us, and we helped them with training. They documented their processes and have started automation. Also, we are currently working with the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI),” the DG said.
He reiterated the fact that although technology is a tool, if the supposed users are not ready to utilise it and are open to its endless possibilities, then, the expected results would never be attained, adding, “If your processes are not optimised and re-engineered, it will be difficult to automate your services.”
Inuwa shared with his visitors, NITDA’s digitisation trajectory, with the aid of slide shows, explaining the different approaches and workings of automation as adopted in the “NITDA Digital Transformation Playbook.”
He recounted how manual processes affected the productivity of NITDA, which necessitated the need to build a high-velocity organisation that would engender high performance and turn over desirable results.
“To achieve that, we had to reimagine ourselves, take a closer look at our mandate to draw up salient points, then. We came up with a new vision of where we want to be as well as core values that will be binding on all in the Agency.
“We had to develop a 2P2CT Framework (i.e. People, Process, Content, Culture and Technology) and deliberately disrupt the way we do things so that we can come up with a new way of doing them.”
While maintaining that corruption happens when there is human contact, Inuwa added that technology can help eliminate that, insisting, “I believe if we can digitise government’s services, it will address the corruption challenges we have in the country.”
The Director-General, therefore, affirmed that the Agency is open to supporting the Commission in its digitisation quest as well as collaborating on any other critical areas.
“Digital Transformation is a journey, it is not a one-off initiative or project that you will execute and you are done, no, it is a journey that needs continuous improvement and we are willing to go on this journey with you,” Inuwa concluded.
Earlier, the ICPC Chairman, Dr. Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, who summarily briefed the DG and his team on the purpose of the visit said that the possibility of fighting corrupt practices and other related offences without utilising technology is minute.
“When you look at the mandate of ICPC, the first responsibility is to ensure that it helps in preventing corruption, then investigate issues of corruption, prosecute, where there is a clear case of corruption, established through investigation.
“So, with a lot of changes observed over the years, particularly, since the creation of the Commission in 2000, we believe that aligning or collaborating with NITDA to digitise our processes will boost our services and speed up deliverables,” Aliyu noted.
The ICPC Chairman further stressed the importance of technology to the overall performance of the Commission, as he expressed the hope that the digitisation process will make the Organisation more transparent, accountable, and effective, which will invariably spur the Nigerian people to have confidence in the Commission.
